That great feeling—the one that was filling him with adrenaline and excitement right now, as the door clanged shut and he was alone on the roof with Ellen—had come to a head, had reached a kind of glorious harmonic crescendo less than an hour ago, when Ellen had handed him that wonderful square of paper with the beautiful moving, shifting symbol and the three lines of writing that were, possibly, the most impressive, the most correct and succinct thing he’d ever read. WHOM DO YOU HATE THE MOST? The question echoed in his head like a beautiful melody you couldn’t get rid of and didn’t want to. Of course he knew the answer to that question—everybody did. The five of them had stood together on this rooftop beneath the overcast sky and discussed their plan—Ellen’s plan—for ruining, destroying, humiliating, punishing Mary Shayne, and it was like he’d found a new purpose in life; there was just no feeling on earth that could compare to the satisfaction of the day they were about to spend.
“Dyl,” Ellen said, coming closer to him, her hands sunk into the pockets of her orange hoodie, in a pose he liked very much, “I’ve got history class in just a few minutes, but I need to talk to you first.”
“Okay,” Dylan said, and when the wind blew the scent of her Neutrogena shampoo over him, he felt a tingling up and down his legs that made him want to sing, that made him want to rush forward and grab Ellen and kiss her like he should have done that evening in the taxicab, before her hateful harpy of a sister had ruined it. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I have to tell you something,” Ellen said, walking closer across the tar paper. “I mean, I want to tell you something. I’m going to tell you a secret.”
“Okay,” Dylan said. He had no idea what she was going to say. He had some delightful theories, each more enticing than the last, but he really didn’t know what came next. If she was going to tell him what to do—give him more of the incredibly clever, incredibly correct directions she’d been dispensing—he wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever she said.
“You know how sometimes you’ve got a secret and you just have to tell it to somebody else … once you’ve found the right person to tell it to?”
“Sure,” Dylan said. He knew exactly what she meant.
“Well, this is one of those times,” Ellen said, taking Dylan’s hands. The overcast light was glinting off distant windows and Dylan thought he’d never felt so content, so happy. TODAY IS THE DAY, Ellen’s note had told him—and he agreed completely. “So I’m going to tell my secret to you.”
Dylan was all ears.
“Can you feel it?” Ellen said, moving closer to him. Now she was so close that he could taste her breath, and his head was swimming with the sensation of being so close. “Can you feel … today? Can you feel how special today is?”
“Yeah,” Dylan said, his breath catching in his throat. “Yeah, I can.”
“Tomorrow will be different,” Ellen said. Her eyes were shining, glinting like gems. “I wasn’t even sure that … that it would work, but it did, it has worked … it is working….”
“What?” Dylan asked. “What’s working?”
Ellen shook her head impatiently. “It’s all about today, Dylan. Today is … is everything. It’s our one chance.”
“Ell, you’re not making sense.”
“No, I am making sense! For the first time, we’re all making sense. We’re finally saying what we really think of her, and we’re finally doing something. And doesn’t it make a difference? Doesn’t everything just feel so much better? So much realer?”
“Yeah.” He could never, in a million years of studying every language known to humanity, have come up with a more fitting, a more appropriate sentiment. Ellen had hit the nail on the head. “Yeah, you’re right. It all feels realer.”
“So I can do this,” Ellen said, tilting her head upward and forward and kissing him, her lips brushing his gently, briefly, before she pulled away, and it was the most exquisite feeling he’d ever felt. It was like being drunk, but, again, it was the opposite of drunkenness; it was clarity, purity, truth. “And we can do what we’re meant to do today. We can … we can take it all the way.”
“What do you mean?” Dylan’s lips were tingling and he wanted her to kiss him again—the entire lower half of his body felt like it was on fire, about to explode—but more than another kiss, he wanted Ellen to finish speaking. “What are you saying, Ellen?”
“We have to leave it loaded,” Ellen murmured, moving her lips to brush his ear. “We have to leave the bullets in the gun.”
“But—” It was like a shadow had passed over the sun; for the briefest of moments Dylan’s euphoria faded, and the cold wind penetrated his clothes like a frozen river. “But wait. You’re saying—”
“I’m saying that the prank isn’t enough. I’m saying it’s enough for them, because they don’t really know her; they don’t know what she’s capable of. They don’t know what she did to me and my family. But she knows, Dylan. Some part of her knows what she did, even if she wants to pretend she can’t remember. That’s what this whole day is for. That’s the point. I’m going to make her remember that day—I’m going to dredge up all her memories till she can’t deny them anymore, because I know some part of her knows what she did, I know it. And she hates herself for it. I’m telling you, if I write her one of the notes and I give her the gun, she will pull the trigger. She’ll do it. And then it’ll be done. It won’t matter how we feel tomorrow. It won’t even matter if we remember any of it, because she’ll be gone. She’ll finally be gone. Don’t you want that as much as I do?”
Dylan wasn’t sure how to answer that. Of course she was right … and he did want it as much as she did … didn’t he?
“So you understand,” Ellen said, squeezing his hand, reaching behind his head to tousle his hair. “You understand, when you pick her up at the farmhouse and bring her back, it won’t be a prank anymore. You’ll be driving her toward a loaded gun. And I need to know you can live with that. Can you do it? Can you do it with me?”
He stared into Ellen’s eyes and the bright sky found the specks of silver there, and it was like the sunlight had returned to his heart and he realized he felt nothing but relief. Mary would be gone and Ellen and Dylan could finally have the life they wanted.
“Yeah,” he told her, and meant it. “Yeah. I can do it.”
Then their faces drifted together, like opposite poles of a magnet, and they almost kissed again, a second glorious kiss, of many to come—but then they both jumped as the metal door crashed open, and they pulled away from each other in alarm.
“Oh, thank God!” Mary yelled, vaulting onto the roof and bearing down on Ellen. “I can’t believe you’re up here—” She ran forward and wrapped her arms tightly around her sister, and Dylan stared at her and thought about the loaded gun and realized he was counting the minutes until he could bring her to her dark destiny.
THE TAXICAB WAS PULLING away as Mary staggered to the curb and stared up at the ornate Romanesque facade of the Peninsula Hotel, all lit up with blazing yellow floodlights like an opera stage.
Her hands and feet—Dylan’s hands and feet—were twitching. Mary was graying out, as she walked—the streetlights were like globes of golden mist, amber halos that shimmered in her blurring vision, doubling and fading as she forced herself forward, step by painful step.
Dylan knew, Mary thought. He was the only one who knew where it was going—who knew I was supposed to die.
And Mary realized something else, as she stared up at the blurring stonework, Dylan’s sneakers splashing water from the sidewalk’s wide puddles. That’s what broke the spell, she realized. He shook it off, because he couldn’t do it.
He was driving me to the hotel—to my death—and the spell wore off.
Mary wondered if it had made any difference—if Dylan’s sudden attack of conscience had gotten him anything but a bullet in the gut. Maybe it had all been for nothing; Dylan’s sacrifices and her own had failed to change anything.
No.
Mary stared up at the lights that festooned the hotel, her eyes swimming and blurring with pain and fatigue as the lights seemed to grow into big, gaseous globes, miniature suns casting their rays down on her face.
No, I can’t give up. I won’t.
Mary’s thoughts melted together as the lights got brighter, overexposed lamps burning the film; candles luring moths to their brilliant deaths; the light of the world, growing in its brilliance until nothing was left but light.
7
ELLEN
THE BRIGHT LIGHT WAS the only light—the shining glow of the recessed track lighting in the bedroom of Patrick Dawes’s hotel suite (the hotel suite that would be his for just a few more hours, until Saturday’s checkout time), where Mary Shayne—Real Mary—was approaching the bed with the wooden box that held the gun.
Mary was standing in the middle of the room, amid the piles of party trash, below the white haze of smoke that still hung in the air. She was Ellen. She knew she was Ellen because she recognized her own scent; she knew it because she could feel Ellen’s clothes on her and the cool wind on the back of her neck, exposed by Ellen’s practical, shapeless bob. And she knew, because Ellen was the seventh soul.
They were all around her, standing in the shadows: Amy and Joon and Scott and Patrick, flanking her like sentinels. Patrick had just activated the stereo system and Nickelback was blasting; Real Mary, twenty feet ahead of her, in the suite’s bedroom, couldn’t hear anything from this room.
Mary remembered that distinctly.
This is it, she thought. This is the end of the line.
I made it.
Without doing anything to alert the others around her in the darkness, Mary began flexing her feet, getting ready to sprint. When the moment came—and it wasn’t far off now, a matter of seconds—she’d have to move very fast.
Staring through the doorway at Real Mary, at her own back, she remembered something. It wasn’t her own memory—it was Ellen’s—but it came into her head unprompted as she stared through the doorway at herself, clenching and unclenching the muscles in her—in Ellen’s—legs.
IN HER MEMORY, ELLEN was in nearly the same position as right now, looking at Mary’s back—but Mary’s back was nude.
They were alone, the two of them, on the second floor of the SoHo Crate and Barrel. In her pocket, Ellen had the keys to the store, which she’d gotten from Scott Sanders, whose father’s company owned the building. When she was finished here, she would head to Scott’s apartment to give him his note and his special instructions.
The only light came from outside. Mary was completely unconscious. The Nembutal Ellen had injected into the wine bottle they had brought for Mary’s birthday dinner at Eduardo’s had done the trick. She’d known that Mom wouldn’t touch the stuff, just as she’d known that Mary would have three glasses, no more, no less.
By the time Mom had left, Mary had begun to faint; her head was lolling on her neck and several of the restaurant’s patrons had turned to watch. But it was no problem. Ellen assured the maître d’ that she’d take care of Mary, and then she’d gotten her outside and into the taxicab she’d had waiting and had brought her sleeping sister down to SoHo, to Crate and Barrel.
A few minutes later, as she pulled Mary’s clothes off (accidentally leaving deep scratches in her back that started bleeding almost immediately), Ellen realized she was crying—but she was able to stop herself as she gently lowered Mary’s naked, unconscious form onto the bed by the window, glancing though the glass at the wide black sky above Houston Street.
(The Sorcerer utters the Incantation before an Unclothed Victim, Slumbering beneath an Open Southern sky)
“Here goes,” Ellen said, her hands trembling as she pulled out Horus’s book—the one her father had pored over endlessly, leaving reams of notes that she’d studied over the years—and opened it to the marked page.
The wide, dark showroom floor was deserted and quiet as Ellen read the incantation, spreading her arms wide, as the sorcerers did when addressing the pharaohs.
This is for you, Mom, Ellen thought, beginning to cry again. And for you, Dad—I miss you so much.
“I Stand in the Center of the Infinite Circle,” Ellen recited. She realized she didn’t need the book; she had the incantation memorized. “I Stand in the Sign of Blood and Flame. Around Me Billow the Forces of the Air. Around Me Flow the Forces of Water. Around Me Flare the Forces of Fire. Around Me Rage the Forces of the Earth.”
Beneath the comforter, Mary was silent and motionless on the wide bed. There was no sign of anything having happened. Outside, a car horn honked; inside, a distant series of clicks and hums indicated that the air circulation system was working.
Are you sure you want to do this?
Yes, Ellen thought. After ten years, she’d never been so sure.
“I Cast Wide My Arms,” Ellen said firmly, tears running down her face. “The Powers of Death, the Powers of Life, Are Mine.”
IN FRONT OF HER, REAL Mary knelt by the side of Patrick’s bed and opened the polished wooden box. She hadn’t taken the gun out yet, but she was about to.
Now, Mary thought.
With as little windup as possible, she started running toward herself. She figured it would take something like five seconds to tackle herself and get the gun away—the gun that only she knew was loaded.
She ran two or three paces, the paper plates and plastic cups underneath her trampling feet slowing her down.
Patrick caught her. He wrapped his powerful arms around her, holding her in place. She bucked and twisted, but it was no use.
“Nobody chickens out,” Patrick snapped, directly in her ear. “Nobody turns back.”
No, Mary yelled—or, she realized, tried to yell. With the deafening music pounding, it took her a moment to realize that she hadn’t made any sound.
“We’re all in this all the way,” Patrick said fiercely. “That was the deal.”
The gun’s loaded, Mary screamed. Don’t you understand? She’s actually going to die—
No sound. There was nothing coming out of her mouth.
In the bedroom, visible through the doorway, Real Mary was pulling the gleaming handgun out of the wooden box. It shone in the overhead lights, a gleaming talisman of death. Real Mary couldn’t hear anything—Nickelback was playing too loud.
Mary began bucking in Patrick’s grip, trying to catch her breath. She couldn’t. She couldn’t seem to fill her lungs with air.
Can’t breathe, she thought desperately. I can’t breathe—
Somehow, Patrick sensed that something was wrong; he let go of her, holding her shoulders and staring at her face. “Ellen?” Trick asked, peering at her in concern. “Are you all right?”
I can’t breathe! she tried to shout back. But nothing came. Her vision was changing, turning red, getting dimmer. Her ears were singing. She was losing her balance, stumbling backward against Trick’s wide shoulders, clawing at the air.
Joon screamed.
The hotel suite’s front door had banged open, and Joon had been looking right at it.
Dylan Summer had arrived.
His shirt was crimson with blood; the entire top half of his jeans, down to the knees, was stained dark purple, as if someone had dumped a case of wine on him. He was deathly pale; his face was covered in sweat and his scruffy hair corkscrewed in soaked strands around his skull like seaweed. He was staggering, grimacing with unbelievable pain.
Mary couldn’t see behind her, so she didn’t know how Patrick reacted to the latest arrival to his suite, but suddenly his hands were gone and nothing was holding her up, and as her ears sang louder and began to sting and pop, and a crimson fog overtook her vision, she weaved and dropped to the floor.
“Ellen?” Dylan shouted, stumbling forward. She could barely hear him—she could barely hear anything. Dylan dropped to the floor and crawled toward her, elbows leaving bloody imprints in the Peninsula’s expensive carpeting. “Ellen? What’s wrong? What happened?”
Mary had tunnel vision; her brain was losing oxygen. She heaved for breath and failed again—she realized she was about to pass out.
It’s me, she mouthed. It’s Mary.
He understood. Somehow, he understood as he stared down at her. She reached up and pulled the torn page of Horus’s book from Dylan’s breast pocket. She waved the page in his face, and he took it, confused—obviously, he had no idea how it got there.
Wrong, Mary mouthed. You said it was wrong. Dylan was staring at the gray image of hieroglyphics on the page she’d handed him. His eyes widened as he scanned the page.
“The translation’s wrong!” Dylan yelled over the music. “The last line of the spell—he got it wrong!”
I can’t breathe, Mary tried to say. She was beginning to faint. Help—I can’t breathe—
(breathe)
“He says if the victim lives, the spell ‘expires.’” Dylan held up the page and pointed at the picture of Horus’s original scroll. “But it’s a different glyph. It’s not the spell that expires—it’s the Spell-Caster. If the victim lives, the Spell-Caster expires!”
What—? What does that mean?
But she knew. She knew because Ellen knew—Ellen remembered.
(breathe)
RUN TO AN OPEN window and breathe.
That was what Mommy had told Ellen to do when there was smoke and there was fire and she couldn’t find a door. Run to an open window and get your breath and then scream for help. Ellen hadn’t actually seen the fire, but she had heard the giant explosion at the door, like God had punched a crack in the world, and she had heard Mommy screaming for her to run, so she was running as hard as she could. If she could find an open window, then she could scream for help, and Mommy and Mary would come back for her.
She hated the old wooden house. The little rooms were dark, because Mommy hadn’t turned the lights on and so Ellen couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t see where she was going, but she couldn’t stop running, because there were still explosions coming from behind her and the horrible sounds of angry men yelling at each other. She was trying to find her way, but even the walls were a dark black musty wood. In her apartment, there was light everywhere—the duck lamp in her room, and the pretty lamps all over the house that Daddy collected, and the streetlamps on the sidewalk—but she didn’t know this place. She didn’t even know why she was here.
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